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Can modern government police itself? Has the American government gotten too big and too powerful in the age of big data, billion dollar budgets and heated global competition for its centenarian constitution? Are we too quick to personify the bureaucratic colossus and expect it to respond like an ethical and nimble organization? Have citizens become too powerful, overwhelmed and confused when given access information and the ability to disseminate it to the four corners of the earth in one instant? Technology and humanity have finally reached a turning point. Human possibilities are magnified immensely by technology for bad and for good.

What is America’s relationship to the world as it looks out on the horizon of international intrigue and what is its relationship inward toward its citizens’ civil rights?

“THERE was something surreal, in a Kafkaesque sort of way, about Barack Obama’s press conference on August 9th. Aiming to ease concern over the government’s surveillance programmes, the president announced reforms that seem both obvious and overdue. Then he criticised the man whose actions set those reforms in motion.

The president’s proposals include creating a group of outside experts to assess the government’s balancing of security and privacy. (When in doubt, create a task force.) More substantially, Mr Obama said he would like to change the proceedings of the secret court that approves electronic spying and interprets counterterrorism laws. Whereas now the court only hears the government’s side of any argument, the president wants to see an opposing viewpoint represented.

Mr Obama also said he would work with Congress to create safeguards against abuse of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect data about Americans’ phone calls. The administration will release the legal rationale for its snooping …”

Are we really going to let the political barrens impoverish our political discourse yet again with another season of the “abortion debate”?

When a young women agonizes about being pregnant or we, as a society, have to deal with the horror of a baby not being born because the women carrying it chooses not to do so, must we take sides and make a spectacle out of that perinatal situation?

Those weeks prior to a baby’s birth and the first few weeks of their lives are magical. But we are not talking here about having a baby or planning to have one. We are talking about, for whatever reason, an unwanted pregnancy. To be sure, the abortion debate is more about a women’s choice whether to reach the perinatal period in the first place. Being pregnant in the early stages is greatly defined by why you are pregnant. It just is.

But abortion, like so many semantically charged issues, has become a political boogyman in our society that is pulled out in the battle of women’s liberation vs. the self proclaimed “moral majority”. Imagine that–intelligent people on both sides let the boogyman out. Today’s media circus allows the few to speak for the many. In this way, an artificial discourse develops and is seen as real and scientific regarding public opinion. Public media becomes public opinion.

Abortion is a sad and horrible fact. The use of the issue as political fodder is wrong. The less sexy issue is the feminization of poverty, for example–how so many women are uneducated, disempowered and abused. Abortion further demonizes these women and their circumstances. Perhaps people of means who have internal demons are more comfortable with boogymen and as such summon them or at least willingly join the party. That women get pregnant in circumstances that are not optimal for the commitment to the growth and birth of the fetus is a fact of life that is not likely to go away. What we do about it as families, neighborhoods and communities to support women’s sexual health is the real issue. Politicians rallying masses of voters will not help solve the central question. Women’s sexual health is often compromised and the outcome of child birth is too often a big problem.

Smart powerful women, or conservative ladies who have their husband’s power behind them, have the time and wherewithal to go on these intellectual and perhaps spiritual pony rides. On the other hand you have the women who do not have the means. Most of these anguishing women and the fetuses which define their predicament are canon fodder in the “good fight”. There are four kinds of people in this struggle. There are the good people fighting the evil people. There are the people who are considered the evil people by the good. There are the people who are considered crazy by most bystanders who have to endure the charade. It’s really difficult to tell who is who–it depends where one is standing.

Abortion has never been a problem for those who have the means to deal with it. That is, to avoid it and have the baby put up for adoption as many did in before the 1970s when the choice became endorsed and supported–liberating young women seemingly everywhere. Today, it is still being dealt with by those of means. That is, conservative politicians looking to drum up support from the believing masses and women’s rights groups who have the wherewithal to define the fight, educate the soldiers, and speak in one voice for such a cacophony of human suffering and hope. This sanguine struggle pales in comparison to any other civil rights issue because it is so private and at its center is not baby killing but a single women’s choice about her body, her psyche and perhaps her soul. How many issues involve sex, blood, shame, hell and even death? But poverty has seized to be the issue of the day and sexuality and babies make for better television. Long gone are the poor welfare mothers who were the demons of yesterday for some and the soldiers in the minds of liberal causes. Bill Clinton had his way with so many women, not to mention the million he kicked off of welfare with his Welfare Act. At last, irony forces all of us to open our eyes and think. Who is really the friend of these women in their darkest hour?

The truth may be that abortion has become an ideological scapegoat, a powerful political tool and a cattle call. Instead of really coming together and fixing the problems that divide us as a nation and impoverish us as communities, abortion as a maternal and child health perspective divides us, brings out the worst in many, and does not solve the ageless problem of child birth as a challenge that overcomes some. But abortion is good politics because it gets folks riled up, to dig in their pockets and to pound the pavement for a cause. Right or wrong–right or left… It all depends where you stand… It rarely depends on where the most disempowered young and scared women stand. The choice is personal, spiritual and perhaps mostly economic. It’s not about women’s liberation… It’s more about having the means–and in politics having the means means getting votes… Abortion moves people.

Here we go again. The bread and butter issues were not good enough to rabble up the masses. It is insane. It is hardly believable and definitely more difficult to fully comprehend. We are all getting riled up again about the “A” word. Never mind that it mostly happens as a consequence of a very private act, without much public notice and with our most private parts. No… that does not matter to the ideological gladiators right and left who have a ticket to ride because they perceive that their bodies are being controlled or that they must intervene in the most personal and spiritual moment of a women’s life–to help or to judge–to help her make a choice or to make communion with a political church that is pushing popular and political orthodoxy.

“The Texas Senate gave final passage on Friday to one of the strictest anti-abortion measures in the country, legislation championed by Gov. Rick Perry, who rallied the Republican-controlled Legislature late last month after a Democratic filibuster blocked the bill and intensified already passionate resistance by …”

First, there is the problem of a powerful drug being re-marketed as Oxycontin and promoted in ways that lead to abuse.

Secondly, there is the demand for this drug that is created that in turn creates a tremendous market that seduces the greedy and the stupid (the marketers and the profiteers because thinking you can sale this stuff and not get caught is not brilliant) and the users who are often victims who innocently become dependent and spend the rest of their lives needing more of the drug to prevent from “getting sick” when they violently experience withdrawal from this highly addictive and dangerous drug–people get so sedated under this drug that they stop breathing and die…).

This is not most importantly a debate about weed or about politics, or even about criminality… It is a calculated business move by investors to promote a substance that is now running wild in our society and killing innocent people…

The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public — and a third of adults under 30 — are religiously unaffiliated today.

The growth in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans — sometimes called the rise of the “nones” — is largely driven by generational replacement, the gradual supplanting of older generations by newer ones. A third (32%) of adults under 30 have no religious affiliation, compared with just one-in-ten who are 65 and older (9%).

Young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives. These generational differences are consistent with other signs of a gradual softening of religious commitment among some (though by no means all) Americans in recent decades.

Pew Research Center surveys conducted over the last 10 years, for example, find modest growth in the number of people who say they seldom or never attend religious services, as well as a declining number who say they never doubt the existence of God. Read more …

To begin with, a quick restatement of the obvious: with a new Gallup poll showing Mitt Romney leading President Obama by two percentage points among likely voters, and the latest Pew Poll showing him four points …

After the first presidential debate in Denver—which an on-the-attack Mitt Romney seemed to exploit better than a noncombative President Barack Obama—at least one question loomed: Why had the president not once referred to the 47 percent video that showed Romney denigrating half of …

Buried deep in the tax returns released by Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign are references to dozens of offshore holdings with names like Ursa Funding (Luxembourg) S.à.r.l. and Sankaty Credit Opportunities Investors (Offshore) IV, based in the …

In seemingly endless times of “trash talk” that led to an improbable and unpopular political victory, the newly minted president clamors: “Now arrives the hour of action.” Fleeting relief comes to the nation as the transition […]

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